Overview
- The Bonn regional court set a single 10-year prison term for Hanno Berger by merging his prior convictions.
- Judges combined the Bonn and Wiesbaden sentences because the crimes were closely linked in time and facts.
- The 10-year term is the harshest imposed so far in the Cum-Ex scandal and ranks among Germany’s toughest tax-evasion penalties.
- Cum-Ex deals exploited dividend refund rules to claim repayments for taxes that were never paid, costing the state about €10 billion.
- Berger has been in custody since 2022, denies guilt, and has a case pending at the European Court of Human Rights as prosecutors prepare more indictments nationwide.